A Stubborn Defence of a Bad Case

Published:Proletarskaya PravdaNo. 1, December 7, 1913.

      Published according to theProletarskaya Pravdatext.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,1977,

      Moscow,Volume 19,

      pages522-524.Translated:The Late George HannaTranscription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive

      (2004).You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.•README

Thosegentlemen, the liquidators, are stubbornly defending
the Octobrist clause that “slipped” into their Bill on liberties. This is
Clause 5, which by a legal twist limits freedom of association by stating
that the workers shall not be liable to criminal prosecution for their
actions“if, in general, they are not actions of a nature that renders
them criminally-liable”.

Thereactionary nature of this clause is obvious. It is obvious thatgenuineSocial-Democrats would say the very opposite of this
pettifoggery, i.e., they would say that acts committed in the course of a
strike, for the purpose of assisting oppressed fellow workers, should not
be liable to punishment, or at least, that the penalty should be reduced.

Itis obvious that the liquidators will have to delete this reactionary
clause from their Bill; the workers will compel them to do so.

Butinstead of straightforwardly admitting their mistake the
liquidators (guided by
Burenin-Gamma[1]) twist and turn and resort to petty lying. Mr. Gorsky
assures us inNovaya Likvidatorskaya
Gazeta[2]that the conferences held abroad (three or four years
ago)[3]“with the closest co-operation of N. Lenin” adopted similar
clauses in a Bill on strikes.

Allthis is a downright falsehood.

Atthese conferences abroad the work was divided as
follows. Subcommittees drafted the bills, while the general committee
discussed certain fundamental questions. Leninwas not even a member of the Strike Subcommittee (he was a member of the
Eight-Hour-Day Subcommittee); and on the general committee, Leninopposedevery point that conceded or recognised criminal
liability!

Mr.Gorskywants to throw the blame for a Bill drafted by a certain
Mr. F. D. (an ex-member of the Strike Subcommittee!) on Lenin. That trick
won’t work, gentlemen.

Indefending this bad case Mr. Burenin-Gamma advanced another bad
argument. He wrote:

“They[the Social-Democrats] should keep their class
   struggle within certain limits, not out of respect for ‘bourgeois law’, but
   out of respect for the legal and moral consciousness of the broad masses of
   the people.”

“They[the Social-Democrats] should keep their class
   struggle within certain limits, not out of respect for ‘bourgeois law’, but
   out of respect for the legal and moral consciousness of the broad masses of
   the people.”

Nowthis is an argument that is indeed worthy of a philistine!

Outof considerations ofexpediencywe wage our class struggle
within certain limits, Mr. Liquidator, and avoid everything which may
(under certain circumstances) disrupt our ranks or facilitate the enemy’s
onslaught upon us at a time when this is to his advantage, etc. Failing to
understand these real reasons, the liquidator falls into the opportunist
morass. What are the broad masses of the people? Those masses are the
undeveloped proletarians and petty-bourgeois who are full of
prejudices—philistine, nationalist, reactionary, clerical and so on, and
so forth.

Howcan we, for example, “respect” the “legal and moral
consciousness” of anti-Semitism, which, as everybody knows, has very often
proved to be a dominant feature of the consciousness of the “broad masses
of the people” even of Vienna (a city that is more cultured than many
Russian cities).

The“legal and moral consciousness” of the broad masses ofphilistineswill condemn, let us say, a blow struck at a blackleg,
when it was struck in the heat of defending a strike called for an increase
of a starvation wage. We shall notadvocateviolence in such cases
because it isinexpedientfrom the point of view ofourstruggle. But we shall not “respect” this philistine “consciousness”;
on the contrary,we shall steadily combat it by all the means of persuasion, propaganda and
agitation at our command.

Mr.Burenin-Gamma’sappeal for “respect” for the legal and moral
consciousness of the broad masses of the people is the appeal of a
philistine for respect for philistine prejudices.

Itis further proof (in addition to a thousand others) of the
philistinism of the liquidators.

[1]Burenin,V. P.—staff employee of the reactionary newspaperNovoye Vremya(New Times); engaged in libelling and
besmearing all progressive social and political trends. Lenin uses the name
as a synonym for those who conduct polemics by dishonest methods.
Gamma—pseudonym of L. Martov.

[2]NovayaLikvidatorskaya Gazeta(New Liquidators’
Gazette)—Lenin’s ironical appelation for the MenshevikNovaya
Rabochaya Gazeta(New Workers’ Newspaper).

[3]Thisrefers to a committee to assist the Social-Democratic group in the
Third Duma in preparing bills for the Duma; it was set up in Paris in 1909,
both Bolsheviks and Mensheviks participating. The committee had
subcommittees to elaborate bills on the eight-hour day, on the right to
strike and on trade unions. The bill on strikes was drawn up by the
Menshevik Dan; it included a point recognising the criminality of
participation in strikes. When the bill was discussed by the committee
Lenin spoke vehemently against this point.